With and Without Christ

One day I went to preach in a village where the people were chiefly Sikhs. When they knew that I was a Sikh convert they bitterly opposed my preaching and began pelting me with pieces of brick. A man was sitting there listening attentively. He at once got up and told the people to stop, and saved me from their attack. Later on, I learned that he was a respectable and influential landowner. When the people began to disperse he took me with him to his house and entertained me hospitably. After I had rested, he took me aside and without reserve opened his heart to me, and said: “A few years ago I went to see a fair. There was a man there selling religious books and I stopped to look at a Gospel. Some bigoted Arya Samajists standing by warned me and others never to buy these books, but a Sadhu who was passing, said: ‘No, no, do not fear, and do not be narrow-minded. No one’s life has ever been affected for evil by reading them, but many lives have been changed. I, too, am in the habit of reading this book. If Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism or any other religion is so weak and unconvincing that it can be defeated by merely reading this book, then it is not worth believing. It is better that we should follow a religion like this, which can overcome all others, and which, by freeing its followers from sin, makes them strong and victorious.’

‘At once,” continued the Sikh, “‘a controversy began between the Arya Samajist and the Sadhu, and, acting on the Sadhu’s advice, I bought a Gospel and came away. I regret that I never met that Sadhu again. When I came home I began to study the Gospel daily and its effect has been such that it has changed my life altogether. Now I realise that Christ alone is my Saviour, and the Saviour of the whole world, and I daily repeat the prayer which He taught His disciples. Now I have in my heart that perfect peace which I never had before. I thank Him for it from the depth of my heart, and whenever I get a chance I too tell the life-giving teaching of the Lord. So far I know the baptism of the Spirit, but not that of water. Can you baptise me?—because, in my old age and weakness, I cannot leave my home and go and live among those foreigners who, being Indians, are yet not Indians. They have become European in all their ways, and are not one whit better morally and spiritually than my people here, but are indeed, in some ways, much worse. Besides this, I do not think that it is the Lord’s will that I should move from here and go to live with them. Some of them are, no doubt, true Christians, but the majority of them are in no way better than non-Christians. It seems to me better to live on here and do what I can for the Lord according to my ability.”’ And with tears in his eyes he added: “I have perfect assurance that if He were to come today, or if I were called at once into His presence, He would in no wise cast me out” (John vi. 37).

As he sat there wiping his eyes, I began to recount to him my own experiences and persecutions, and to tell how God had wonderfully preserved me. I stayed with him for a few days and he helped me in every way in my preaching. As I myself do not baptise, I advised him to send for some padre; and to be like the man from whom the Lord cast out the legion of evil spirits, and whom He sent back to witness in his own house and among his friends what great things the Lord had done for him (Mark v. 19).

In my opinion, it would have been better if, instead of separating new converts from their friends and relatives, they had been allowed to stay on in their old homes, and there to give their witness. Then they would have been stronger through the struggle and persecution which they would have had to face. Without doubt they would have had to face many dangers and temptations and difficulties; but this also should be remembered —that in their new environment, freed from the social restraints of their brotherhood, they have to meet equally great dangers and difficulties. Judging by my own experience, I would say that the difficulties are just as great, though they differ in kind, from those in the old home.

In this chapter I have attempted to show that the quickening work of the Living Christ is not confined to our organised churches, but is going on among non-Christians far in ex- cess of what is commonly known, or of any estimate we can make. And it is undoubtedly true that people from all races of the world will continue to enter into the Kingdom of God, while thousands of the sons of the Kingdom—the members of the visible Church—will be cast into outer darkness (Matt. viii. 11-12).

IN THE last chapter we saw that many known as non-Christians are, at heart, really true Christians. In this chapter we shall see that there are many known as Christians who are yet non-Christians. Christ said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” We can know the Way only by walking in it, the Truth only by seeking it with our whole heart, and the Life only by living it.

There are many so-called Christians who have no desire to walk in the Way, or to know the Truth, or even to live the Life; so they have no part in the knowledge of the Truth, or in experience of the Life lived in the Living Christ, and they leave the Way to take their own ways, of which the end is destruction. Consequently, they are not only without Christ, and are themselves unbelievers, but are worse than many non-Christians.

In many Western countries which are known as Christian there has been a great extension of education and of social and political freedom which is the direct outcome of the teaching of Christ, but it must be remembered that no nation is altogether Christian. Numbers of sincere Christians are to be found among all peoples, but we can never go the length of saying that the community may be regarded as wholly Christian. My opinion is that the nations which owe their uplift to the blessings of the Gospel of Christ have, in our days, often turned away from Him and disobeyed His commands. Instead of their people having individually accepted Him as their Saviour, they have too often forsaken Him and dishonoured Him by denying His divinity. Thus they have confirmed the words which He quoted, “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me” (John xitt. 18). He came to His own that He might lift them from their fallen and sin-spoiled lives and fully restore them to sonship with God—‘but His own received Him not” (John i. 11).

After a meeting which I had in Cambridge, a promising Hindu student came to me. He had been a Mission school-boy in India. He said that while he was at that school his heart had been so drawn towards Christ that he had decided to become a Christian. He had gone to the missionary and had asked for baptism, but, as he was under the age for baptism required by Government, the missionary could not do it. Still he was determined that, when he reached the required age, he would be baptised. After this, he entered a Mission college, and later on had been sent by his parents to England. ‘When I was preparing to come here,” he said, “I was overjoyed, because I was to have the good fortune to be sent to a Christian country and receive education and spiritual blessings in the land from which our good missionaries had come. But after I had landed and had lived here for some time, and seen the conduct and ways of life of the people, I was greatly disillusioned. During my vacations, I visited France, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries on the continent, and found that the people there were worse heathens than are to be found in non-Christian countries. In the latter countries, if people are not Hindus they are Mohammedans, if not Mohammedans they follow some other religion; but in these European countries if they are not

Christians they are nothing at all, and have no religion except worldliness. And this applies not merely to the common people, but to some of the highly-educated leading men as well. Even some of my professors have told me that they do not specially believe in any religion, but look on all as equal. “Besides this, even from among those who call themselves Christians, I have met some who have driven an axe into the root of Christianity, that is, they have denied the divinity of Christ—the very foundation of the Christian faith, When I first found out these things I was so greatly distressed that, had I not already tasted the fellowship and love of Christ in my life, I should have become altogether irreligious, and have lost my faith in Christ. Indeed, this is what happened to a friend of mine who believed in Christ as a Saviour, though he had no deep experience of Him. He is now most emphatic in main- taining that Christianity is nothing but a show and a sham, and says that when he returns to India he will tell the missionaries that, if there is any truth in Christianity, they had better go back to their own people and teach them, for they need it more than we do. I have decided,” concluded my visitor, “that I will never become a member of any of these ~churches-without-charity, though I will, as far as possible, follow and serve my Lord.”

I replied to him: “To a great extent I agree with you, for my experience is somewhat similar. I know there are many who call themselves Christians without having had any kind of experience of Christ. I call them Christians-without-Christ. If the members of a Church are without Christian life, that is Churchianity without Christianity. ‘The treligion of those Christians who deny the deity of Christ is truly Christzanity-without-Christ. They are shells without kernels and bodies without souls. Mere civilisation and moral life, however beautiful it may be, is like a cold and lifeless statue. Do not be upset about this. It is no fault of our Living Lord. It is not He who has failed, but the people who have failed to understand and follow Him, for they have given Him no chance to change their lives and make a paradise of their hearts.”

Before we can know the divinity of Christ we must be made new creatures. The old nature, sin-stained and fallen, is incapable of knowing Him. A new life and a new nature must be ours before we can know Him who is the image of the invisible God, and in whose image we have been created (Col.

i. 15; iii. 10); only then shall we know Him as ‘‘the true God”’ (1 John v. 20).

Man not only has fallen from his original state, but is dead as well; hence he cannot feel the presence of God which is about us like air. As a dead man neither breathes nor feels the air in which he lies, so a man dead in sin neither feels God’s presence about him nor breathes the breath of prayer.

When God breathed into Adam the bréath of life he became a “living soul” (Gen. ii. 7), but by sin that soul became dead; so it becomes necessary that the Lord should again breathe into him the breath of life (John xx. 22).

“The sun may be seen only in its own light, and the “Light of the world” can be seen and known only in His own light; but we must have spiritual sight before we can see it. But the blind and they “that seeing, see not,” are like the owls and the bats which have eyes yet get no help from the sun.

The realisation of God and spiritual knowledge do not depend on the knowledge of this world. Mere worldly knowledge of isms and ologies often silences the inner voice and in its place makes an artificial voice which misleads men, instead of directing them to the tight way. Real spiritual knowledge comes only through prayer and meditation, because God then speaks to man in the secret chamber of the heart and there we hear His “still, small voice.’ At such times God reveals to His children things hidden from the wise of this world who have not experienced that new birth by which alone they could have entered into the new relationship of being His children. Jesus reveals Himself to the man who believes on Him, and in Himself reveals God the Father to him (Matt. xi. 26-27; John xiv. 21-23). Wecan get worldly knowledge by tuition, but spiritual knowledge comes only by zntuition enlightened by Him.